They
by caliheartsbones15
Summary: He is heartbroken. She is the reason. But they are something entirely different.
1. Chapter 1

**I was warming up to put up a new chapter on my Bones fic, The Wedding and had been reading some Castle fic and just kind of got carried away. I don't own Castle (trust me, if I did, I'd be doing a lot more than writing fan fic for it) R&R**

Sometimes she wondered. If she had been alive, what would she say? But wondering never healed the wounds. Nothing ever gave closure. She would love him. Maybe thats why Beckett hated his first impression. He made her heart beat just a little faster and her wounds feel a little like scars. The moment he told her her own life story, he turned life on its head. She hated that she could never hide. Her walls might as well have been made out of used popsicle sticks because they never seemed to hold up.

"Beckett?"

"I need you"

"_Marry me."_

Could she say yes to forever, yes to never feeling wounded?

"_I love you"_

"Yes."

"_Don't let me waste anymore time."_

Sometimes he thought. I wonder what she thinks as she closes her eyes at night, as she smiles for no reason in particular. Why it feels like every cut and scrape from every quick relationship or one night stand never existed. The transience of Castle's life had made him never feel quite secure, never felt safe. No consistent dad, no consistent home. But she pulled his feet back on the ground and the moment he looked at her he knew this was one story he wanted to hear but also wanted to be a character in. He needed to make her pieces fit together.

"Castle?"

"Yeah?"

"_I need you."_

"Marry me, please"

"_Yes"_

"Don't let me waste anymore time"

"_I love you."_

This was her invitation. She wanted him in her story.

And then, it was they or them.

"_Forever."_


	2. Chapter 2

**So my Bones fic is almost finished and I kind of wanted to do a continuation of one of my Castle fics. I'm kind of experimenting with the story telling style so any critique's are welcome. As always read and review. **

**Cali**

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Someone to tell the story. Maybe that's what they wanted.

Maybe they wanted it told in private moments, moments that were unmarked and passed without regard to those around them.

Someone to put the pieces together. To put them in a time line, so that maybe they could see how this happened. She said no. He said maybe. They said someday. But they were both in denial.

Decisions were made early on and they were forever decisions. Decisions that changed _them._

He knew he loved her from the second he saw her. Her sparkling green eyes spoke of wit, her tall, lithe frame spoke grace. He was the eternal optimist, always believing. Despite her efforts to dissuade his effort, to break his loyalty.

She knew she would fall for him and it scared her. He was her opposite. The ying to her yang. Maybe that was the point. Beckett had never believed in soul mates and she had never believed in happily ever after. Fairy tales were nothing to put false hope in.

But _they_ painted a beautiful picture. She relied on him in a strange way. His wit kept the darkness from consuming her. She kept realistic. Remembering what reality looks like. Together they made a pair. They made _they._

And everyone saw it. From the people they worked with to their suspects to those that saw them on the street. The suspects thought it to be a weakness. Their colleagues bet on it. And those that saw them, they just smiled.

And nobody but them denied it.

And this is their story, told in both private moments and in the eyes of others.

But that's for another day.


	3. Chapter 3

All it took was a moment. Like a storm it builds, the pressure pulling and tugging at the insides of the cloud, making every characteristic of the cloud change. It goes from something fluffy and flirtatious and it changes to a dark gray and it begins to smolder. Then it is deadly silence.

And it pours.

But what if this is the beginning?

It rains and pours and floods the ground but what if it's a hurricane?

It will be the death and the life beginning.

And here is where it begins.

"Castle?"

"Kate"

Kate Beckett stood outside a door that opened her past. It opened a wounded part that she had been ready to rip open again. She supposed the idea of it all was to heal but, as of yet, it wasn't working. As soon as he opened the door and blue collided with green, she believed this to be all a mistake. His eyes had begun to crinkle slightly but otherwise, he still made her weak.

"I'm sorry, I never should've come."

She looked into his eyes and they looked hazy, not their usually clear azure.

"Don't you dare."

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her in.

It was then that Beckett realized why his eyes were hazy. They were shrouded by tears.

He pulled her into a tight embrace that took her breath away.

"Where the hell have you been, Kate?"

"Undercover." she said, breaking their embrace.

"3 years. 3 years, I had no idea where you were and Montgomery couldn't tell me anything. For the first, I don't know, eight months, I called a few times a week to see what was going on. Then, I gave up."

Beckett was drawn in with his side of her story, she was drawn in until he began to raise his voice and she remembered that this was real. This wasn't him bouncing some stupid theory off of her and it wasn't a stranger that he was yelling at. He was raw and angry.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't tell anyone."

"I was your best friend;" he said, his tone bleeding regret "Hell, right before you disappeared, we were more."

"We still can." Beckett said, in a hushed whisper as if to remind herself why she was here.

"No, Kate, I'm not sure we can. You broke not only my heart but Alexis's. You were the stable mom she never had and you just disappearing was like Meredith all over again. It was like that for both of us."

The last part was as a whisper as if Alexis were a guise. Beckett had shattered his heart. Tears began to stream as she realized what had happened in her absence. She left the only one who had made sense of her story. The only one who loved her enough to try.

"I'm sorry. I don't know why I bothered coming." She choked out

"Then I guess you should leave." He said, emotionless but his voice was strained.

"Yeah, I guess. I'm going back to work. Montgomery has my new number if you want to come back."

"Okay, it's unlikely but, thanks."

"Bye, Castle."

"Bye, Detective"

Beckett simply climbed in her car and wept.

Maybe heir story is a story of hellos and goodbyes. So how can the end tell the story of the beginning? The question is not can but how. Think of yourself. Does the your life's continuity flow as it should or as you's like? Or does the end begin to explain the beginning? You tell me but, they will tell us.


	4. Chapter 4

**Hey y'all, **

**So what'd ya think of the season finale? Part of me wanted to be angry but, part of me loved it. Just wanted to remind people that this fic is kind of an experiment. I'm mixing a few different writing techniques and I hope you're all following the story. The songs are Wasteland by Augustana and Bulletproof Weeks by Matt Nathanson.**

**I own nothing (sadly Jose Molina isn't leaving so I can write) and, as always, read and review!**

**3,**

**Cali**

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If our thoughts of the human experience are common, to a degree, is it right to say that two minds, once connected, might very well be mirrors? Each showing a reflection and make what was once a two dimensional drawing into an object full of life. The thoughts tell as much of their story as their word or even deed.

_Now I'm sitting on a plane, lonely flight back to LA...  
Don't come back with me  
So I'll drink myself to sleep, cut my skin until I bleed  
Hold my breath all the night_

__

Hear the sound, she was naked on the ground,  
Till I whispered in her ear..  
Come away, watch the dawn break through the day,  
Till the sun, is underneath...

_Cause it's 5 o'clock, the hour stops the sunlight,  
The buildings shade the masquerade and kill time,  
Here we're nothin more than fools and whores and sad highs,  
Through the summer sand, we're living in a wasteland  
_

The mournful lyrics played somberly from the small speakers in Beckett's kitchen. She still hadn't gotten back to work yet; taking advantage of the "take as much time as you need" from Montgomery. She hadn't left her apartment in days, hadn't slept in longer. She drank a little, cried a little but, in all of it, mourned her own regret. She thought he would understand but she had never seen him so cold. So detached. _He used Alexis as a guise. Nice, Kate. Kate, he called you Kate. Until the end. Detective sounded so-clinical. He must hate me._

_Up on 59th street  
Right before the rain  
Lovers catching taxis going downtown_

__

I'm talking to what's left of you  
I'm watching what I say  
Countin' all the freckles on your perfect face

You'd open your window  
I'd stay on your bed  
Just waiting for right words to come

_So what happened to bulletproof weeks in your arms  
What happened to feeling cheap radio song_

_What happened to thinking the world was flat  
What happened to that ?_

The haunting melody that floated out of Alexis's room was bringing tears to Castle's eyes. It reminded him of the only woman he loved. He hated that he was mad at her and he hated that she knew it. He hated the fact that a broken heart made it so easy to hate when he so desperately wanted to love her. Something had changed about her. No longer such a confident stride to her step or the playful gleam in her eye. Castle deduced that whatever happened to her happened while she was undercover. He wanted to find out but being near her would kill him. He had done nothing but drink or write and when he wrote, he always wrote about her. And so would go the process of deleting and rewriting and drinking a glass of whiskey, hoping that the burn in his throat would be a sick sense of inspiration. _The way she looked at me. She wanted things to be the same I know it. Alexis was a shoddy cop out and you both know it. She wanted to love you. And now she must think you hate her._

Do they know each other better than they thought? Are they the same or are they the the opposites bound to attract? Hate is a strong word when used in the context of what used to be. Does this mean that the love of these two is like a fermenting wine, going from hate to love and back to hate? Will it ever become sweet again? Or will it be like the whiskey, killing as it burns?

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**Hit the button!**


	5. Chapter 5

**Hello fan-boys and girls,**

**Sorry this took so long to get out, I had finals and then a laptop-less vacation. But I have now sacrificed laundry, a clean room and my AP reading to bring you this extra long (for me anyway) chapter. I've had Open Office open all day waiting for my writers block to pass and FINALLY, it did. The song at the end is The Needle and The Damage Done by Neil Young. By the way, the story is set with Beckett going undercover during the summer that Castle is in the Hampton's with Gina (I love it when the cannon writers do something to help MY story *tee hee*). He comes back to an absence of Beckett. Thanks for reading and thanks for your patience.**

**Peace, Love and OW,OW, APPLES,**

**Cali**

**I don't own anything, even though I asked really nicely and said please (apparently ABC doesn't sell entire shows just for a charming personality and winning good looks)**

****Memories are foolish things as almost any broken heart can tell you. They linger of the familiar and the what-if's and would have been's. Beckett knew that better than anyone. And Castle knew her better than anyone. But roles were now changed. When she left, she took his heart with her. Everyone saw it. His poker buddies, now regretting their blithe notion that she was a "distraction," saw that she was truly, by every sense of the definition, his muse.

His family saw it. His mother officially had gained a grown up for a son and found that she hated it. She felt as though she had lost a daughter. And the one who felt it almost as acutely as her father, was Alexis. She had lost a role model, one her few sources of stability, a women that she considered more a mother than her own mother. Worst of all, she lost her father.

At graduation, she watched for her. Waiting for her to saunter in, green eyes sparkling with pride. Alexis cried for hours after graduating. She had been valedictorian, gave a speech full of meaningless words about a future that few in that room had earned . Kate would have been proud.

Now a sophomore in college, majoring in criminal law at Columbia, she found out about Kate's return. She still went home for the weekends, still trying to raise her father and because of who he became, Alexis Castle always worried about her father.

The traffic from Columbia to Manhattan always left Alexis cranky. She wanted to talk to her dad, to see him. She spent the short drive wondering if the return had been amicable and the sparkle had been ransomed and returned to her fathers blue eyes. She figured, based on the conditions of Kate's departure, that it had been awkward and full of silence and had ended clinical, at best. Anyone who hurt her father like Kate had made Alexis angry but it was _Kate._ She had left carnage in her wake. Alexis made up her mind. Kate was in for one hell of a visit.

Alexis arrived at her fathers apartment to find him alone, a familiar stance but something disturbingly familiar struck Alexis like a two ton truck. _She's been here. _The air reeked of whiskey and an unshowered man that she knew to be her father. She heard the clicking of keys from her fathers study and she smiled, knowing that he was still doing what made him happy. Or at least she hoped and thought it still did.

"Dad?" Alexis called into the almost empty apartment

"In here, hon." her dad called from his study

Alexis walked in to find her father at his desk, a glass and a bottle next to him, his blood shot eyes made obvious only by the bags under them. _He's been drinking, he hasn't been sleeping and worst of all, he's alone. _Alexis wanted to cry.

"Hey,sweetheart, how are you?" Rick Castle said, planting a kiss on the crown of his daughters head.

"Oh, stressed, you know, college, adulthood."

"Nope, no clue, never happened to me." said her father playfully, pasting on an all too plastic grin.

"Dad."

"What? What's wrong?"

"First, I'm not sixteen anymore, I know she was here. And second, when was the last time you ate, slept, showered, left the house or any combination of the three?"

Rick couldn't help but inch out a small smile at his daughter's constant motherly concern for him. Her way of coping, he supposed. She was a cop-out at the time of Beckett's visit because he knew that Kate couldn't argue with what even she knew and it would deflect Castle's own feelings. In all legitimacy, Kate's absence had made Alexis more of a grown-up at seventeen that most are in their thirties.

"I don't know, kiddo. It's been a few days since she was here so it was probably then."

"How is she? More importantly, where the hell did she run off to?"

Hearing the anger in his daughter's voice startled him and he responded, "She was hopeful when she came but then I suppose that reality kicked in and she left fairly quickly. She says she was undercover and I believe her."

"Why couldn't she tell us? I thought we were family!" Alexis said, tone graduating from a whisper to a scream as she tried to hold back tears.

"That's it! Do you know where she's living?"

"I believe she's at her old place, why?"

"The needle needs to see the damage done"

Alexis arrived at the detective's doorstep after confirming the location of her and stood there a moment before she knocked. Once she did, it dawned on her that Kate might be back to work already. Alexis' fears wear assuaged when she heard footsteps padding towards her and the chain unlocking. A slightly older looking but still beautiful Kate Beckett opened the door to a much older Alexis Castle. Alexis had grown, her hair now cut shoulder length and dyed to a darker shade of red. Her fathers blue eyes were still there, now framed by a pair of black rimmed glasses. Beckett had her same thin physique, her hair still in it's shoulder- length, mahogany curls, her eyes still the same green. Worry had sculpted a few lines onto her face and stolen the sparkle from her eyes but,other than that, age hadn't touched the older woman much.

"Alexis." Kate said, unable to hide her shock

"Kate." Alexis said, a rogue tear racing down her cheek, threatening a full blown race.

"Wow, um, come in." Kate said, unsure of how the young women was reacting, not sure if they were tears of anger or sadness.

"Do you want anything? Water? Coffee?"

"No, no thanks." Alexis said. Icy.

"How are you?" Beckett said, realizing that Alexis was the closest thing that Rick had to a mama bear and she fear the wrath of the girl.

"I must say I've been better." Alexis said, looking down. Damn emotions. She looked back up and held Kate's eyes. Kate all at once realized what she had done.

"Alexis, I'm so sorry. I-"

"You what? Didn't mean to? Thought that things could be the same? How the hell could you leave my dad like that?" Alexis screamed, not holding anything back. Kate knew what she was saying. _How could you leave me like that? _Then Kate realized that she had been the closest thing to a stable, loving mother that Alexis had had. Not only had she left Castle, she had left Alexis to deal with her father's broken heart, while trying to mend her own.

"Alexis, I'm sorry. So, so,so sorry."

"How. Could. You?"

Beckett looked up at her with tears in her eyes.

"I don't know. I guess I was angry. Angry at your dad for leaving with Gina. That I was alone. When Montgomery said that female cops were needed by vice to do some undercover work, I jumped at the chance, thinking it would pass the time until your dad came back. But weeks turned into months and they turned into years."

"Yo-you missed so much," Alexis said, the tears running a marathon across her face now. "My graduation. I was valedictorian. I got accepted into Columbia for criminal law. I got to watch my "nine year old on a sugar rush" father, slowly die inside, to the point where he acted like a grown up. My grandmother died. My father has drank himself into oblivion, time and time again. And all you have is sorry."

"Martha is dead? When? How?"

"Cancer, about a year after you left."

"I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, I've noticed."

"Please, Alexis. I'm begging you, give me a new start. Let me in again and I will prove that I still care."

"I won't shut you out. I've needed you for too long to do that. But earning my trust isn't going to be easy."

"I know."

"It's going to be harder with Dad though. He loved and I suppose still does love you. A lot. Gina was a substitute. He always wanted you."

"I know that. Now."

"I have to go. Here's my cell number. We can get coffee sometime or something."

"Okay, and here's mine. Bye, Alexis. And thank you."

"Your welcome, Kate. See you soon."

"See you."

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_I've seen the needle and the damage done,a little part of it in everyone..._


	6. Chapter 6

**Please don't hurt me! I did not abandon the story, I promise! But I had a writing intensive college class that I was taking. I had no desire to write by the time I finished my homework. But I really wanted to keep working on this story and now that the semester is over, maybe , possibly, it won't be six months until I update again :)**

**I don't own Castle; if I did, the word HIATUS would not exist! I can't wait for next weeks NEW, AMAZING episode!**

**Cali**

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_Three and a half years earlier..._

"_Beckett?"_

"_Yeah, Castle?"_

"_What's your biggest fear?"_

"_Why? I swear, if it's for one of your bo-"_

"_No, it isn't. Just curiousity."_

"_Losing someone that I love again and going my whole life never catching the person who did it."_

"_Like me?" Castle said playfully._

"_Very funny. Someone like my father. Family. I couldn't go through what I did with my mother again. It would be the death of me. What about you?" _

"_Alexis. Losing Alexis. It would be like losing my world."_

Now freeze this image. Castle and Beckett are walking together; they just finished notifying a grieving wife that her husband isn't going to come home to her again. If you'll look closely behind them, you'll see a man. He is unexceptional, except for one thing. He was hanging on every word of this conversation. This man doesn't know it but, this woman is a cop. He doesn't see her again for several years. Then he remembers. Her biggest fear.

"No, no... not him. You can't- NO!" screamed Kate Beckett, alarmingly wakened from her slumber by yet another nightmare. She reaches for her phone on the nightstand table. She unconsciously dialed his number. Memorized by heart.

"Hello?" said a seemingly wide awake Castle.

_He isn't sleeping. Crap. I didn't mean to- SAY SOMETHING!_

"Hi, um, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to- I'll just, um, hang up now."

"No."

"What?"

"Obviously, you dialed my number for some reason. So spit it out, Kate."

"I was checking to see if you were alive."

"What? Kate, of course I'm alive. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Just a stupid nightmare. Never mind."

"No. It isn't just never mind. Trust me, there is no such thing as a stupid nightmare. Kate, please. Tell me."

"We were solving a case together; we were in that magic shop, Drake's and all of the sudden it became a house of mirrors. And I ran and ran and was screaming your name and I couldn't find you anywhere! Then finally I found you. Whispering my name, blood gushing out of your stomach. Than your face changed to his. And he said, _You couldn't do it, could you?"_ Silent tremors were wracking her body. Thoughts of him flash through her mind; threatening to swallow her whole.

"Kate, what the hell happened to you?"

"I don't know. If you know, please, please tell me. Castle, please forgive me. I need you to. I know it's not that easy and I can't make up for lost moments. Just to know that you don't hate me." she spoke softly; the tremors changing to silent, trembling sobbing.

"Kate, never once did the word hate came to mind. Anger, yes. Hurt, yes. Fury at how badly you hurt my sweet girl, yes. But never hate. I'm forgive you. I absolve you of your sins if thats what your looking for. If its trust, you have some serious work to do." Castle said, exhaustion sweeping over him like a wave. Whereas age had hardly touched the detective, the writer had aged significantly, or at least the lines etched on his face made it seem that way.

"I need to see you. Please."

"Kate."

"You need to know why I left. You need to know what happened to me."

"Now?"

"If you want," she said, her heart leaping at the thought of seeing him and quickly sinking at _why._

" Give me a chance to freshen up and I'll be over in about a half an hour."

"Okay. See you then."

"Bye. And Kate? I'm glad you called me."

Kate Beckett looked at her clock. _1:17_. _Wow, Kate. One in the freakin' morning. Genius. _

_I wish you'd hold me when I turn my back~ The less I give the more I get back~ Oh your hands can heal, your hands can bruise~I don't have a choise but I'd still choose you ~_

We see two become one again. He slips inside her impenetrable shell and become enchanted again. He longs to put these pieces together. He wants to know every piece of the tragedy that is Katherine Beckett.

She has been someone else for two years. She needs her solidarity. He is crazy and wonderful and spontaneous. Or at least he was. _They_ balanced each other; each using each other like a powerful drug. A drug that, even after the withdrawals are through, you can never really go without. You just learn how to live without it.

Kate begins to straighten up her apartment, taking care of old take-out containers, putting the empty wine bottles in the recycling. She takes a shower, after which she puts on the skinniest skinny jeans a cop's paycheck can buy, with a cardigan and a slouchy purple t-shirt. It feels so good to be dressed. Clean. She applies her simple make-up and allows her hair to fall in loose, natural curls. _Any minute now. Dressed for the day at two a.m. Really on top of things today, Katie. _

She puts coffee on and waits.

He showers, washing the smell of stale cologne and whiskey off of his tired skin. He gets dressed. _ I guess this is it._ He puts on his coat, hails a cab. And then, all he can do is wait.

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~_No, I don't love you, but I always will~_

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_**The song is "Poison & Wine" by The Civil Wars**


	7. Chapter 7

**I couldn't resist writing, there were too many ideas jumbling themselves in my head. Plus, you guys deserve a couple of chapters. I have been the flakiest author! I love the way this story is coming along and I hope you do too!**

**3,**

**Kahli **

**I don't own Castle, the oh-so-lucky Andrew Marlowe does. He is indeed the keeper of the Castle Book of Secrets. Please read and review! I get so happy when I read them :)**

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By two o' clock, Beckett heard a soft knocking on her door. The smell of hot coffee filled her nose as she padded to the door. When she opened the door, a different sort of smell filled her nose. _His smell. _ And her eyes, when her eyes met his; green collided with blue . Both waited for the other to break the terse silence. Finally, Castle did.

"Kate."

"Hey, come on in," she responded, giving him a tight hug. She inhaled his very essence and closed her eyes. _Richard Alexander Castle, you have no idea how much I have needed you in the past three years. _He let go of her embrace and she missed it already.

_"_Is that coffee I smell?" Castle said, smiling.

_It's still there. _If there was one thing about Richard Castle that Katherine Beckett could not resist, it was the way his smile seemed, no matter how small, to reach up and kiss his cerulean eyes and how it made them crinkle softly at the corners.

"Yeah, you want a cup? I thought you might want some considering, well, it's, um, two am."

"Yeah, I would."

"Grab a seat and I'll get you a cup."

He walked into her living room and listened to the clang and clatter of the coffee mugs in the kitchen. He looked around at her living room. _It's barely changed at all. _Pictures of her friends and family littered the mantel of her crackled, white fireplace. Castle only paid attention to two specific photos though. One was of a brunette that looked much like Kate herself._ Her mother. _The other picture that caught his eye was a picture of three people. It was Kate, Alexis, and himself. _She never forgot. She was always thinking of Alexis and I. _At that second, Kate walked it carrying two steaming mugs of coffee.

"Kate, I need you to tell me what happened. Please. I don't know how much will change or what the hell could have so important that you couldn't tell me. Or at least let Montgomery tell me. You missed so much. My mom's dead, you know that, right? Alexis graduated. "

" I know. She came over and told me all that and more. Rick, do you remember the guy they busted about two years ago? They called him "Your Worst Nightmare?"

"Vaguely. There was a period of time when I was more absorbed in the Jack Daniels label than any piece of news or journalism. What was his M.O?"

Kate knew Castle well enough to know that she had engaged the writer in Castle's brain.

"He stalks his victims for years at a time, looking for their worst fear. You know, that one fear you only trust with certain people. The one that would kill you if it ever happened. You once told me that yours was losing Alexis."

"That doesn't even sound like it should be real. What a psycho," Castle said, pausing to take a sip of his coffee, "but what does that have to do with you?"

"NYPD had tried everything to lure this guy. The only way that they knew they could get the bastard was to send someone undercover. They said it was long term; and I have to admit, if I could have seen this conversation before I made the decision to go, I never would have" Beckett swallowed, as she realized the magnitude of vulnerability she was showing right now. _He deserves me not lying to him anymore._

"So you did it. Kate, what was your worst fear?"

"Losing someone I love. Losing my dad." _Or you. Or Alexis _

_Oh God, _Rick thought, _her dad._

"Is your dad-"

"No. That's how they caught him. About two years into the operation. I was living as Anna Simmons, a waitress at a 'blue-plate special' in the middle of downtown. Walking down the alley out to my car, a man grabbed me and I couldn't fight back. I wasn't supposed to. I was his prisoner for over four months. Raped over and over. He told me that it was every woman's fear to be raped, to have that stolen from them. He beat me. Then he figured it out. My cover was blown. Then he remembered an incident. A conversation I had long forgot. Apparently he's a big Richard Castle fan because the only way he remembered this conversation was because he saw you. We were waiting for the light to change at a crosswalk. You asked me what my worst fear was. Long story short, he went after my father who was being followed by a security detail for two years straight. I had told Montgomery what I told you."

"Kate."

"I don't want pity. I thought it might make this whole "forgiveness" pill a bit easier to swallow."

"Did he do that to all his victims? Rape them, I mean?"

"There was evidence of it on the rest of his victims. I was the first one that he imprisoned."

"He's in prison now, right?"

"He's awaiting trial."

" Are you going to have to testify?"

"Considering I'm his only living victim, yes."

"I 'm so sorry, Kate. That I doubted you like I did. It's just, and it isn't a cop-out, if you had watched what it put Alexis through when you left. She was valedictorian. Y ou would have been so proud of her. She came home and cried. Do you know why her concentration is criminal law?" Castle said, tears in his eyes.

"I have a sick feeling that I do."

"She said that she wanted a major that would make you proud, whatever the hell had happened to you. She said she never wanted to have to face on of your cases someday as the defense. She wanted justice, and defending killers and rapist's wasn't what she was ingrained to do. I can thank you for that quality in my daughter."

"Rick, I wanted to tell you so bad. But I knew he would just keep killing, no, brutalizing these women. And I knew that if Montgomery told you, my cover would be gone. Well, earlier than it was blown anyway." Kate almost whispered, a dark chuckle was it's accompaniment.

"I want this to work. It will be baby steps. I used to tell Alexis when she was little that just because it was an accident didn't mean that it didn't happen. It's gonna work the same way with you. Kate, I can't afford for you to break my heart again. I need to know that you're still the same Kate Beckett that I remember."

"Okay."

"Just one more question. You said you're worst nightmare was losing someone you love. The only reason I'm here is because you had a nightmare. Does that mean what I think it means?"

They never once broke eye contact.

"Richard Alexander Castle, I love you."

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~Open up next to you and my secrets become your truth; And the distance between that was sheltering me comes in full view; hang my head, break my heart built from all I have torn apart  
And my burden to bear is a love I can't carry anymore~

* * *

**Song is "Breathe Again" by Sara Bareilles**


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